SOUTHERN LIGHTS: Alabamians who left their mark on history

Sunday

Dec 23, 2012 at 12:01 AM

I have a friend — to protect his life and safety, we’ll just call him Fred — who says he doesn’t like Hank Williams.

By Ben Windham

I have a friend — to protect his life and safety, we’ll just call him Fred — who says he doesn’t like Hank Williams.Fred was born and bred in Alabama. And for a native Alabamian, not liking Hank Williams is flat-out apostasy and heresy.It’s like being from Tuscaloosa and not liking Paul W. “Bear” Bryant. There are Tuscaloosans who don’t, but they are well-known and kept under strict scrutiny by the rest of us.I could see, perhaps, the occasional Auburn fan in our midst who might disavow “Bear” Bryant. But Hank Williams? Who doesn’t like Hank Williams?I have long held that ol’ Hank is one of two singers that you have to like before you can truly say that you like country music. Not that pap and crap that oozes out of Nashville today, but real country music.Those two are Hank and Ernest Tubb.But Fred, who has a big collection of country recordings — who was a country radio deejay, who made regular trips to Nashville, who loves Dolly Parton and Buck Owens — doesn’t like Ernest Tubb either.“He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket,” Fred said with cliched disdain.Granted, Ernest frequently sang as flat as the Texas plains. Most of the time, he sounded like a regular guy singing in the shower. But that’s a big part of his Everyman charm.I thought about Fred when I played a game I sometimes play. Quick, think of 25 Alabamians who left their mark.Well, George C. Wallace is at the top of everyone’s list. Oily and angry, a native of tiny Clio in Barbour County, he was the biggest noise in Alabama in the 1960s and some of the ’70s. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that he left his mark.OK, then there’s Helen Keller, Julia Tutwiler, Harper Lee, Fred Shuttlesworth … uh … yeah, Tallulah Bankhead … um …“Maybe we ought to limit it to 10,” Fred said. Interestingly, he counted Hank Williams as one of his 10.“He was from Alabama and he left his mark,” Fred said. “I don’t have to like him.”OK, name three more.“Well,” said Fred, rolling his eyes and dimly remembering something he learned in junior high, “well ... that Gorgas guy, who built the Panama Canal and conquered yellow fever … um … Hugo Black … and (Ralph) “Shug” Jordan.”“Shug Jordan?” I exploded. I could accept William Gorgas, even though he didn’t exactly build the Panama Canal. And Hugo Black was certainly famous and left his mark.But Shug Jordan? Nobody outside of Alabama ever heard of Shug Jordan. In 100 years, nobody except Auburn medievalists will know who he was.“To balance out ‘Bear’ Bryant,” Fred muttered.“You didn’t list ‘Bear’ Bryant,” I said.“OK.” Fred stared up at the ceiling. “One more … How ’bout Chief Tuskaloosa?”Well, OK. Tuskaloosa was an important man to Indians, or whatever you want to call the people who lived in 16th-century Alabama. And Tuskaloosa did write history during the de Soto expedition. He was influential, but did he leave his mark? I guess, but it seems kind of a stretch. But I left Tuskaloosa in to honor all the centuries and centuries of great people, people who left their marks here before the white man came. People we may never know about.Fred had to struggle to get to 10. But there are a lot of Alabamians who left marks that many of us may never know about or think about.To wit:Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben, a native of minuscule Dutch Bend in Autauga County. Born in 1840, he was one of the founders of Jefferson County’s mighty steel industry.Dinah Washington. A native Tuscaloosan (born in 1924 and originally named Ruth Lee Jones), she escaped the South’s brutal racism as a child when she moved with her family to Chicago. She established herself in the 1950s as the one of the world’s great jazz singers, messing up minds with her sassy and brassy vocals.E.O. Wilson. Born in Birmingham in 1929, he is a true Renaissance man — a world-famous biologist, author, naturalist, researcher and theorist. Some of his work is over the heads of the average lay reader, but his 2010 book, “Anthill: A Novel” is a fascinating piece of writing that will be lauded for centuries to come. Like Galileo Galilei, he grows in stature through the years.Mary Ward Brown. Born in Hamburg in 1917 and raised in a farm family, Brown is one of this country’s finest writers of short stories. Well into her 90s today, she did not become a national success until she was in her 60s, but she wrote for many years before that. Her collection of stories, “Tongues of Flame,” crackles with the fire of Old Testament Alabama.Zelda Fitzgerald. You may argue that this Montgomery native (born in 1900) is famous mostly for being the wife of acclaimed novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, but Zelda set the template for the young women of the Jazz Age and Roaring ’20s. She was a writer, also, but her work is negligible; what really count are her image, style and attitude. She was a partier, a drinker, a dancer, a lunatic; beautiful and damned. Did she leave her mark? You betcha.Sun Ra. He told many interviewers that he was born on Saturn, and some that he was just found floating in the air, but this influential musician first saw the light of day in Birmingham in 1914. He was named Herman Poole “Sonny” Blount before he changed it legally to Le Sony’r Ra. Active in Fletcher Henderson’s band, he became part of the jazz avant-garde in the 1960s, when his musical experiments often demanded different ears. Later, he played more conventional music, but he still is regarded by many listeners as an eccentric. That isn’t true of leading musicians, however. He was a major influence on John Coltrane and George Clinton, while Duke Ellington was among his admirers.You could go on and on: Johnny Mack Brown, Hank Aaron, James Reese Europe, Robert Shelton (yes, he left his mark, too), Donnie Allison, Clarence Carter, Wilson Pickett, Hank Ballard, Nat “King” Cole, Bart Starr, Lister Hill …“Yeah, OK,” Fred said, “but not ‘Bear’ Bryant. Everybody knows that Bear Bryant came from Moro Bottom, Ark..”There was a look of triumph on Fred’s face.I didn’t count Bryant on my list. But he’s as much an Alabamian as anyone else there.He lived in Arkansas for around 18 years, but he attended college and played football here in Tuscaloosa for four years and then served as an assistant coach around four years. He did time in the Army and had jobs in Maryland, Kentucky and Texas, but he came back to Alabama in 1958 and lived and coached here for 25 more years.He lived most of his life here. You can see a replica of his office at the Paul W. Bryant Museum and if you are in the know, you can see his house — pretty much unchanged from the coaching days — in east Tuscaloosa. There’s a statue to Bryant. Some day, they will put up a monument at his house. The man left his mark, for sure.

Ben Windham is retired editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News. His email address is SWind15443@aol.com.

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